A decades-old warning about an abandoned oil well beneath Ladera Ranch, California, has emerged as residents seek answers about a series of rare cancer diagnoses among children and young adults in the Orange County community. The warning appears in records for an abandoned well near Citrus Lane, a street in the city.
Written twice by hand and later included in the well’s final abandonment report, the note states: “This well is not to be built over without further consideration.” The records do not explain why someone added the warning, the Los Angeles Times reported Aug. 30.
That unexplained warning has drawn attention because the well sits beneath a community where residents have raised concerns about childhood cancer. Developers built Ladera Ranch in the 1990s, a 4,000-acre planned community now with roughly 26,000 residents.
The Ladera Ranch Ewing sarcoma outbreak.
The cancer concern centers in part on Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive cancer that develops in bone or soft tissue. The disease primarily affects children and young adults, particularly those between the ages of 10 and 20. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 200 children and teens in the United States receive an Ewing sarcoma diagnosis each year, underscoring how uncommon the disease is…